Pablo Picasso

"Why I Joined the Communist Party"

My joining the Communist Party is a logical step in my life and my work and gives them
meaning. Through design and color, I have tried to penetrate deeper into a knowledge of
the world and of men so that this knowledge might free us. In my own way I have always
said what I considered most true, most just and best, and therefore, most beautiful. But
during the oppression and the insurrection I felt that that was not enough, that I had to
fight not only with painting but with my whole being. Previously, out of a sort of
"innocence", I had not understood this.

I have become a Communist because our party strives more than any other to know and to
build a better world, to make men clearer thinkers, more free and more happy. I have
become a Communist because the Communists are the bravest in France, in the Soviet Union,
as they are in my country, Spain. I have never felt more free, more complete since I
joined. While I wait for the time when Spain can take me back again, the French Communist
Party is a fatherland to me. In it I find again all my friends -- the great scientist,
Paul Langevin, and Frederick Joliet Curie, the great writers Louis Aragon and Paul Eulard,
and so many of the beautiful faces of the insurgents of Paris. I am again among my
brothers.